Public employees do quite well for themselves

An exhaustively reported, data-driven Bloomberg story comes up with some eye-opening figures on compensation trends for 1.4 million public employees in the most populous 12 states, including Ohio.

One state — California — stands apart from the others as setting “a pattern of lax management, inefficient operations and out-of-control costs,” Bloomberg reports in the first story in “America's Great State Payroll Giveaway,” a six-part series.

California in 2011 had the highest average salary for public employees, at $60,313. Its nearly 246,000 public workers also collected $964 million in overtime payments that year.

Ohio, by contrast, paid state workers an average of $48,812, which was sixth-highest among the 12 largest states. (Doesn't it seem like Ohio is almost always in the middle, no matter what's being ranked?) The state's 66,510 workers collected $108.4 million in overtime in 2011.

The issue of compensation for public employees has become a hot-button political issue of late, prompting, for instance, Republican Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin to strip most government employees of collective-bargaining rights and to take other steps to limit payroll spending.

The averages don't strike me as all that outrageous, though benefits for public workers undoubtedly are more generous these days than the typical private-sector worker.

Bloomberg, though, did turn up some particularly striking examples of public pay largesse.

For instance, Britt Harris, chief investment officer at the Teacher Retirement System of Texas, last year collected $1 million, including his $480,000 salary and two years of bonuses — more than four times what Republican Gov. Rick Perry was paid. Pension managers in Ohio and Virginia made up to $678,000 and $660,000, respectively, according to the data, which Bloomberg obtained using public-record requests. (In an interview, Mr. Harris told the news service that public pension pay must be competitive with the private sector to attract top investment talent.)

Bloomberg also notes that psychiatrists were among the highest-paid state employees in Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan and New Jersey, with total compensation of $270,000 to $327,000 for top earners.

Also, “state police officers in Pennsylvania collected checks as big as $190,000 for unused vacation and personal leave as they retired young enough to start second careers, while Virginia paid active officers as much as $109,000 in overtime alone, the data show,” according to the story.

Well, well, well

Ohio employers are more conscious of wellness than those in many other states, The Business Courier of Cincinnati says, based on a report from benefits consulting firm Horan Associates.

Nearly 19% of Ohio employers surveyed offered a company-sponsored wellness program, compared with slightly less than 18% nationally, according to Horan.

The finding comes from the 2012 Health Plan Survey conducted by Horan's national partner, United Benefit Advisors. The research includes responses from 17,905 health plans sponsored by 11,711 employers across the country, the Business Courier noted.

Wellness programs, the paper says, “have become employers' key strategy for reducing health expenditures,” as many companies “feel they're getting diminishing returns from cost-shifting strategies, such as increasing deductibles and copays.” They now trying to implement programs that will reduce the number of medical claims their employees make.

The emphasis on wellness, though, isn't stopping the rise in health coverage costs. United Benefit says the average renewal cost of all plan types for clients was 5% this year. For Ohio firms, though, that figure was 7.5%.

Party time

Companies are getting back into the holiday spirit, according to this survey by the Society for Human Resource Management.

Nearly three-quarters of employers surveyed — 72% — said they are holding holiday parties this year, up from 68% in 2001 and 61% in 2010. Only 10% of respondents said they had to cut back on holiday parties this year due to financial challenges, down from 20% in 2009.

“At the height of the recession when employers were operating on very lean budgets, events like holiday parties were among the first to be cut,” said Evren Esen, manager of the organization's Survey Research Center, in a statement. “An increase in this area may be a sign that more organizations are resuming their pre-recession business practices.”

Among other survey findings:

61% of companies plan to serve alcohol at their holiday or end-of-year parties. About half of employers, 51%, will regulate alcohol consumption through methods such as providing drink tickets or a drink maximum, serving only certain types of alcohol or having a cash bar.

74% of employers participate in charitable donations or drives during the holiday season.

Only 30% of organizations give all employees non-performance based bonuses.